Reformers could be crucial in farm bill passage

On a 230-194 vote last June, the House attached a tough new set of payment reforms to farm subsidies. Minutes later, two-thirds of the same 230 “reformers” turned around and voted against the bill on final passage.

That split still echoes six months later in the final House-Senate negotiations on the farm bill this week. And as they push toward a final deal, the Agriculture committees have to ask themselves at each step: Who can be counted on in what could be a very tight vote on final passage?

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For sure, the pro-reform forces are stronger than ever and may well be decisive in the House. But their feckless record of support is a liability — making it harder to effect real change in a hidebound world that resists any meddling from outside.

The high profile Environmental Working Group can seem almost a satire on the reform movement with its stable of hired economists and relentless pursuit of press coverage. Tax records for recent years show EWG’s annual budget has grown to nearly $6 million and its founder is now paid more than members of Congress.

That’s not quite David fighting the commodity Goliath. And after years of campaigning to end direct cash payments to farmers, EWG scarcely paused in its attacks to give credit to the House and Senate committees for having done so.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a second Washington-based nonprofit, is a professional gadfly in its own right but lower key and more willing to work for incremental progress. Ferd Hoefner, the policy director and a former House aide, agrees reformers can be fickle. But he also warns that the final farm bill vote could be “a nail-biter” in which reform votes can’t be ignored.

Indeed, as they stand now, both farm bills embrace tougher payment limits than ever before in the commodity title. When it comes to crop insurance, the Senate opens the door to some limit on premium subsidies for the very wealthiest farmers. And at the urging of environmentalists, the Senate attaches new conservation compliance provisions to this title.

That said, the Senate’s new Agricultural Risk Coverage plan backed by the Corn Belt is looking much more costly than first advertised. This feeds a growing resentment among Southern lawmakers who complain of the Midwest’s false piety — even as the region stands to collect more in government payments while enjoying uncapped subsidies on crop insurance.

In fact, because the commodity title caps are not indexed to volume or production costs, they are quicker to impact Southern crops like peanuts and rice, with higher operating costs per acre than corn or soybeans.

This point is more relevant now with the end of direct payments. Those cash subsidies have gone out at a fixed annual rate since 1996. The safety net programs in the new farm bill are triggered by market losses — meaning the caps could hit hardest at the time of greatest need.

Nowhere are these tensions more clear than in the backroom struggle now over new rules to determine who qualifies as being “actively engaged” in farming — and therefore counted when calculating the payment caps for any single operation.

For years, Midwest reformers have argued that large growers, especially in the South, abuse the system by creating general partnerships and joint ventures in which multiple members are counted as being engaged in the farm’s operations.